25Y Male making over $250K+ annually. Still stuck. Help? - <AUTHOR> My friend is a 25Y old male with a wife and a newborn. He has a high paying salary (Over $160K+ annually), and his wife makes over $90K. His schedule is pretty flexible, and he enjoys his job although he hates his commute. They aren't a showy family.  They both drive used cars, cook at home, max out their 401K, etc. However, my friend still feels "stuck". Like he hasn't accomplished what he was called to do in life. He's always working on some startup trying to become the next millionaire but continues to fail. What kind of advice can I give him? <comment><USER2> He doesn't understand how to be happy or satisfied. He needs a therapist. I think most people do, they underestimate the value of having an independent sounding board to help work through these kinds of feelings.

His expectations are either unrealistic, or he's surrounded by people who are always doing better, despite him doing well, which makes him seem like a failure. He has the luxury of those feelings.

Silicon Valley can be a totally distorted place where there is always someone doing better. It's important to look inwards for satisfaction, and not externally, or some arbitrary barometer of success.

Plus, the people around him who appear to be winners, are often chock full of their own problems.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I look forward to the day when twice-yearly visits to a therapist are as socially-accepted and -expected as visits to the dentist.

Your brain, like your teeth or your car, needs regular servicing by a professional if you want optimal performance and want to avoid costly repairs.

<comment><USER4> > Your brain, like your teeth or your car, needs regular servicing by a > professional if you want optimal performance and want to avoid costly > repairs.

I don't know that I agree. I was fortunate to be raised by incredible parents. I emerged extremely well-adjusted and prepared for adulthood. I am not saying I never benefit from a counselor or therapist. There have been times I have visited each for help and advice, or even just to get an outside evaluation about something. But I do not need to go regularly like I would to the dentist. That's not being arrogant, that's just knowing myself.

Your brain needs regular exercise, sure. But I think it is more analogous to physical exercise than something like the dentist. I agree that most people could benefit from having a regular appointment with a physical trainer, but many people are well-equipped to be their own trainer, at least for the purpose of staying healthy and happy. I think the same is true of mental health.

<comment><USER3> I think we agree in the large part. The part about relying on a third-party professional was assumed.

I'm reminded of a relative's teeth: they might have been born with exceptional enamel, preventing all manner of early cavities, but now they lack the oral hygiene habits they need going forward.

Along those same lines: to what degree are you uncommonly well-adjusted, versus born to circumstances in which many of your foibles don't cause problems to _you_ because of the consequence buffer provided by fortuitous race, sex, orientation, class, etc.? I know I can get away with under- developed stress processing because I'm white and male and date women, for example.

<comment><USER4> Well, I can't claim to know with absolute certainty how I would react in situations that I have never been in; I am not omniscient. I do feel like I am fairly well equipped to handle whatever situation was given to me without regular help from a therapist.

I'm not saying I'm perfect, far from it. But I am well aware of my faults and fairly well aware of what I would need to do to shore them up. That doesn't mean it is easy. Like I said, I don't have any problem going to a therapist for help with something I am struggling with. But I can't imagine any situation in life where I would need to regularly visit a therapist.

Like your relative, I was gifted with great genes as far as my dental health goes. I've never had a cavity or any oral problems for that matter. Somewhere along the way I learned to take care of my teeth properly. However, I still need and benefit from regularly visiting a dentist, despite my good genes or how well equipped I am to handle my teeth on my own. I just don't feel the same about therapists, as wonderful as they can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, have him read "Walden" by Thoreau. Here are a few of my Kindle highlights.

"I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment."

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once."

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them."

"I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South."

</comment><comment><USER6> I deal with this concern myself, and the answer I've been mulling over recently is related to the Big Fish In A Small Pond analogy. (In fact, I think of it in the same terms as your friend: winning my freedom)

In the Bay Area, things are very expensive and its hard to put money away, and its also hard to feel like "you've won" because other folks are so dramatically more successful than you. However, after visiting home for Christmas I realized that I'm actually quite successful. So the problem is that I'm a small or medium fish in a very large pond. So I don't ever feel like I'm free because I'm not a big fish. Whats unfair is that a lot of the big fish in SF owe their size to luck. Its not that they are necessarily objectively better than the smaller fish, they just got lucky. (Granted, sometimes they are better: Elon Musk).

So, my advice to your friend would be to seek a high paying job which allows telecommuting, for both him and his wife. Then, move to somewhere livable but dirt cheap. Then, sock money away like a madman. Then, once you've got a pile of cash...stop working. Stop working for 3 years or so, enjoy that 3 years of freedom. Build something, maybe it will take off.

Thats where my thoughts are right now, it'd be great to hear an update on what he thinks about it.

EDIT: I wanted to add this follow up. One of the interesting things about this conundrum is, for me, not being as successful/free as I want creates a significant amount of stress. I worry about it far more than I should. I worry about it to the point where it has a negative impact on my ability to think clearly because my mood is so depressed...and its like being stuck in a trap because I worry I'm not successful enough, but the worry depresses me enough that I can't pursue means of being successful. Its now a question of: Can I overcome that stress in my current situation, or, are things going to have to change?

<comment><USER7> > Stop working for 3 years or so, enjoy that 3 years of freedom. Build > something, maybe it will take off.

The more cash and runway you have to build something, the more cash and runway you'll use. This is not necessarily a good thing. It could lead to over- engineering, a feeling of security which keeps you from talking to users early enough, and just a lot of potential for wasting time and money in quantities you would otherwise not be comfortable with.

If you spend 3 years time and all of your savings and don't succeed, you may become further depressed and your project derailed.

FWIW, I'd suggest starting a project on the side and continuing to make incremental progress. It's hard, and doesn't always feel good, but the pressure and lack of time will push you to make things happen faster and get creative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are a number of things to consider. Finding accomplishment in life is something many struggle with.

Perhaps your friend would feel some accomplishment by:

* Mentoring new startups

* Mentoring disadvantaged youth

* Religion

* Community service/projects

* Becoming involved in local government service

* Horticulture

* Woodwork/old car restoration/old computer restoration

* Adopt an elderly neighbor as a "grandparent", that he goes and speaks with on a regular (at least weekly) basis

* Read the works of the greats, genre open

* Pick up painting or other artistic ventures

* Set a goal that's a lot of fun. For example, I know of a friend who has a life goal to hike each US state's highest peak or point. He's made it about 15 in, and has a lot left to go.

* Get involved with the local Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts program (related to mentoring), if Boy Scouts go through Woodbadge (extensive leadership training)

* Join a nonprofit board

Each of these points are kind of getting at a main point: live for something. Work and career are certainly intended to be a vocation, but they aren't always going to be an avocation. When avocation and vocation conflict, I believe a lot of people get dissatisfied.

Of course, I could also be completely wrong and a therapist is advisable. But it's something to consider.

<comment><USER9> Religion: How is a faith system i.e. "pretending to know things that you don't know" going to help? Community is a good thing, sure. But how does faith help?

<comment><USER10> Your definition of faith is incorrect. Faith in anything (religious or not) is merely choosing to believe in it without the necessary evidence or facts that would prove it to be true. "Pretending to know" implies something fairly different.

I'm not sure I would recommend religion to this person. But I wouldn't be surprised if his unhappiness comes from what he chooses to believe in some context.

<comment><USER8> I'm not arguing that this is the only nor optimal solution, certainly. Nor that he should adopt or adhere to something he doesn't believe. I mention this simply to note that many in the stage of life where they're discontent and are "soul-searching" find solace and meaning in religion.

In short, it's an option that's there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quarter-life crisis. He's asking "is this all there is?"

Not everybody feels compelled to a higher calling. In fact, I'd say most people don't. That doesn't mean life isn't worth living, it just means he hasn't found something that he can pour all of his extra energy in to.

Edited to add: Trevor Blackwell used to have something on his web site about founder's stories. I can't find it now. Basically, he was saying that people want to hear inspiring stories from founders about their "a ha" moments and how they were driven to a single goal. This is not how it works for most people. Most innovators, through hard work or happenstance, stumble upon something they have a knack for, and pursue it until they slowly, gradually push the boundaries of the possible. But that doesn't make for a good story.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tell him to stop chasing the money. Save it up, get (or create, i.e. freelance) a lower-paying position with more flexibility, live simply and enjoy time with your family. No one ever said they wished they had spent more time at work when they have children at home.

I wish I had followed that advice at 25.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just let him know that I'm nearly twice his age, make half as much, fail at startup ideas and feel stuck, as well. That should make him happier.

</comment><comment><USER14> What kind of job pays a 25 year old 160k with flexible hours? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER15> Many intermediate-senior level dev jobs at AAA-level shops (see: Google, Facebook, etc), as well as many startups. I know people in this range (and above) in both the Bay Area and NYC.

<comment><USER14> Yes but at 25? That's 4 years of experience out of college. I'm in my second year working in technology for a large i-bank and I'm barely breaching 100k :(

<comment><USER16> I know this doesn't need saying ... But I can guarantee you that there are ~25 year old bankers at the investment bank who are making more a lot more than $100k. Technology roles are discounted at investment banks, since they perceive technology as a cost centre, not a profit centre. But at Google/Apple/etc, it's the opposite - technology is a profit centre, and finance roles are a cost centre.

<comment><USER14> Yeah I understand that, I'm just surprised that it's feasible to make that much in technology. I had an offer from Microsoft when I graduated that was about the same so I'd have to gain around 14.5% every year to get to 165k. Seems a bit high or perhaps I was just being lowballed.

<comment><USER15> Big companies _suck_ at giving raises. I've achieved a pretty decent average- raise-per-year by hopping every year or two (works out to about 13% per year for me), I've only been in the industry for ~4 years.

Experience is worth a tremendous amount in this industry, but you'd never realize this if you're too loyal to a single employer. Shop around, hop when it benefits you.

Most starting new-grad packages are around $100K these days in the Bay Area, and said companies would be content giving you 1% to 3% raises a year from there. To maximize your value you _must_ change jobs.

<comment><USER17> Is this really true outside of FB, Google, etc?

Outside of mobile/web dev?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe this will help:

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is- stoicism-a...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-and- how-can-it-turn-your-life-to-solid-gold/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Does he live in SV? The culture of SV is the rat race with a small but showy percentage breaking free.

<comment><USER20> "Nice house for 250K"

No way is this SV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When you earn a decent wage, most people assume you're set for life, however you're not. In fact, it can cause problems that most people can't perceive.

Firstly, you tend to live within your salary terms: you get a nice home, you spend a little more on the luxuries of life and you find each month that you don't have quite as much left over as you would expect.

You don't need to be showy for this to happen. I know people on equivalent salaries who don't own cars and live in small flats who don't have a lot of spare cash.

And then you have the freedom aspect of things that ties in with this: because you are never really sitting on a big pile of cash, and because the bills are coming in regularly you feel trapped. You need to keep on making a decent amount of money, and therefore you end up working for somebody else on something you're not too happy with in order to just stay where you are. Meanwhile, the industry moves on and you feel as though you're stuck in the same place and eventually you'll get eclipsed, so you throw yourself into staying ahead and all you're doing is running on a conveyor belt.

There's no easy fix. What I suggest for your friend is to focus on that concept of freedom.

There is a metaphorical story for your friend about a tramp and a greedy millionaire. The tramp proclaimed that he was the richer man because he had all the money he wanted, yet the millionaire was compelled to keep working because he wanted more. Who was the freer?

Live on less. Stockpile the cash. Realise you can buy a home outright with a few year's savings and be free of rent or mortgage. Move and keep stockpiling the cash. Grow food. Do more with less. Realise over time that you're spending virtually nothing and you can live on that stockpile for 5 years. Then 10 years. Then 20 years. Then realise you're free. Stop working for somebody else. Throw yourself into something you love.

I've been in a similar position to your friend - the only way out realistically is to live on less. Chasing more is a fool's errand as a first step. Make do with nothing, spend your time on something you love, and then the opportunity will arise to have the freedom to do something more.

This idea that you can become a millionaire by writing some apps or mining some Bitcoin is one of the most toxic and acidic things in our (development) culture right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul,

I think this is where he fits in. When him and his wife were making only 40K combined, they carpooled to work, lived in a 700sqft apartment, barely went out, etc. Now that they got some money, they bought a decent house ($250K), 2 cars, and they started paying off loans etc. He said even though they make $250K, his monthly expenses are over $7-8K. His whole thing is that he wants to be "financially free". I think his business ideas all are focused on MAKING MONEY, hence why he keeps failing.

<comment><USER22> At first I thought maybe work didn't seem fulfilling, and he wanted to run his own business. Running a business can be extremely rewarding, so I thought this was his plan. However, if he's only after money, then he might just be chasing a pipe dream.

If he's making millions, he'll probably be buying exotic cars, and feel like a failure because he can't buy a yacht. Then he makes tens of millions, has his new toy yacht, but feels like a failure because he doesn't own a private jet.

With his current income, he should be able to live quite well. You said, he wants to be _financially free_. If that's his goal, why is he racking up $8k in monthly expenses? It seems like he wants to live a lavish lifestyle, that's always above his means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Freedom comes from within.

Your friend's young. He has plenty of time to accomplish everything he wants to (and what he wants to accomplish will change over time). Freedom comes from within. It's important that he realises that he's already enjoying his freedom to have a stable and settled life, start a family and invest in its future by buying a house and growing his 401k.

Maybe he needs to start putting a little money by every month towards a sabbatical fund so that, a few years down the line, he can afford to take 6 or 12 months off work and do the stuff he doesn't feel free to do now.

</comment><comment><USER24> "High paying salary" and "continues to fail" are contradictions and very unusual.

<comment><USER5> That depends on your definition of success.

At a certain level how much money you make doesn't really increase our happiness ([http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary- fo...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary-for- happiness-75000-a-year/)). It's tough, without knowing him, to know what his real goals and desires are, but it seems to me like "make more money" isn't the answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> He always talks about how he wants to be "free". And he's not "free" yet. Even though he makes money, he still has debt (school loans, mortgage, car payments, daycare, etc etc)..

<comment><USER20> I'm surprised no one here has said it yet. But your friend is actually quite smart. While he and his wife are making 250K now, there is no guarantee they will be making this much in 10 years. My wife and I had pretty high student loans ... we are doing a somewhat decent job getting these paid off. Sadly, because of all the debt, our net worth is pretty low even though we are in our 30s. Unlike your friend who is lucky/smart enough to earn such a high salary in a place where a decent house costs 250K, my wife and I would need just under a million to get a decent house.

tldr. 250K isn't that much these days when you factor taxes, child care, housing costs and student loan replayments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't get this rush to have a full blown family in your early/mid twenties. I was terrified of having children in my twenties and just enjoyed travelling and hanging out with friends and not be tied down with such responsibilities. Now in my mid thirties I don't have this void feeling inside and ready for whatever my current long term relationship brings about.

<comment><USER22> Same, spent most of my twenties enjoying the world, and focusing on business. I wouldn't do it any other way, while a lot of my friends are tied down with houses and families in their twenties.

I'm jealous of one thing though. They got to spend their twenties with the partner they'll spend the rest of their life with. I've had a lot of great times in my 20s, but those memories are mostly with people that have come and gone. If you're meeting someone and starting a family in your thirties, it needs to move quickly, and women always want to have children before 35. So, if you meet someone early thirties, you're spending a quick year or two together, and starting a family. If you meet early twenties, you could spend at least a decade growing and experiencing a lot together before starting a family.

So, that's my one regret, I'll never be a 40 or 50 year old, being able to reminisce with my partner about the fun adventures we had together in our 20s.

However, you can't have it both ways, and I imagine people that settle down or start a long term relationship early feel like they missed out on a few years of independent freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nothing wrong with staying hungry in his professional life. At his age, no matter how successful you are, you should always try to reach the next level. As long as he is happy with other parts of his life i.e family. Nobody should be satisfied with their career/life at age 25 but he has the luxury to balance it with what his household income is at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER27> He's stuck in the success trap. You've detailed a list that has very little actual correlation to fulfillment. Those are all issues related to security, comfort, and a lifelong desire to one day avoid work.

I wrote a couple pieces on this at startupathlete.com.

Protip: millions of $ =/= success. Ask any millionaire what they would wish for and it's not another million $.

That being said, one of the best questions to ask when someone is in a rut is, 'if money was no object, if you had millions in the bank, what would you be doing'. The follow up, 'why aren't you doing that', will always have some excuse about money, which is bullshit. It's about fear, security, and risk tolerance.

The happiest people I know have the stones to risk their pride, lose all their stuff, and live with mistakes. The saddest people I know spend their later lives regretting the risks they never took.

Wish you both the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think, in his situation, he is doing his best. Not a lot of people earn so much money. Not a lot of people's wives earn so much. I think he deserves a credit for trying. And after some amount of efforts he will get there. I have witnessed a lot of criticism about the 'founder - millionaire goal of life'. People who criticize such goals, I believe do not have big dreams, or for some reason, they can't do it. Your friend should feel satisfied. Me being a recent grad, earning about half as your friend, fail to even give it a try. That should be considered as stuck. I think, through his attempts, a. he will learn a lot. b. someday, he will get there. Goals should be decided by an individual, you can't decide his goals, or can't call him stupid for chasing million dollars. I guess that answers the question.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just wait until the newborn gets a little older. I have two kids under 3 and found a renewed sense of purpose as they've gotten past the newborn stage. My priorities have also shifted away from career and startup success to family. Perhaps it will be the same for him.

</comment><comment><USER30> In life you have to find your own rules, values, and rewards. I find letting anyone dictate that for you will make you miserable. Most successful startups aren't done to be the next big millionaire, but b/c they felt compelled to create something awesome.

</comment><comment><USER31> What he needs is the "big picture".

This can be acquired in several ways, depending on the personality of the person, from what I have seen.

So a few different things:

Recently, I saw a good talk by MindValley CEO, [http://www.mindvalley.com/goal-setting- redefined#sthash.aYjq...](http://www.mindvalley.com/goal-setting- redefined#sthash.aYjqm9Dq.dpbs)

Basically, the mind is what feels "stuck" or anything for that matter, so anything you can do to calm the mind will help you to see a change. The time- tested approach is Meditation.

Another one, thinking and doing something for others beyond your immediate family without any returns - whether it is for those in your community or the other side of the world.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER32> Since you said he's always working on some startup to become the next millionare I'm assuming he is surrounding himself in that culture. Wouldn't he also be on HN?

Anyway, although it's hard to sympathize for someone that seems financially stable with a wife AND a newborn to not have a purpose in life, try surrounding him with friends and activities. What are his hobbies (besides startup life)? Tell him to watch some TED talks discussing this same thing. Hell, volunteer! The culture shock of helping those in need should make one self aware of their luck and privileges vs. immersing yourself around people who strive for the next big thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Save money like crazy, then retire into a part-time job and do whatever you want. Pick some hobbies or ambitions and work on those. It's not about making enough money to demonstrate your status and live a life of ease, it's about making enough money to be free from having to do work you don't want to. Build a home shop, lab, recording studio into your house. Buy a yacht to sail around the world with. Spend your time climbing mountains, hiking trails, or even just going to the theater or the symphony. Also, think about getting involved with a non-profit or a charity when transitioning into that part-time pseudo- retirement.

</comment><comment><USER34> After figuring out what would fulfill him, he should consider starting his own venture doing exactly that. A venture is my material representation of freedom, his may differ -- the take away is that freedom is what enables you to get unstuck. I used to be in a similar position, making good money as a tech exec and feeling stuck. The freedom to impact the world, in my chosen fashion, was the cure and my only regret was that I didn't figure that out sooner. The most surprising thing to me was that the money side of things accompanied the impact I was able to achieve, without making it a focus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, I guess it's not just him....I didn't realize so many fairly "rich" people struggle with this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hit a similar psychological patch a bit later than your friend (low. 30s). I would never tell someone to have kids if it's not what they want in life just as a punt to see if it fills a void. I will say that after having kids I found a level of meaning in life I never expected (I was never anti-kid but being a dad wasn't something I dreamt about either and I had the standard fears/reservations). It's not 100% but I have vastly less angst now that I'm not fulfilling some grand cosmic mission with my life. I've found happiness a different way.

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://helloimnadia.com/post/68175306402/how-to-ensure- finan...](http://helloimnadia.com/post/68175306402/how-to-ensure-financial- independence-in-the-long-run)

The above article seems like a good point of view. Basically achieving the top 1% is an ideal that's sold to us but very very unlikely to become reality. A much better approach would be to find contentment in what you're doing.

</comment><comment><USER37> He's 25. His life isn't even 1/3rd done. It's pretty rare to even know what you want to do at that age, let alone have actually accomplished it. What your friend needs is some perspective on just how great he is doing. However, I don't have an answer on how he gets it. A lot of it comes maturity I think.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Like he hasn't accomplished what he was called to do in life. He's always working on some startup trying to become the next millionaire but continues to fail."

Is the calling to be the next millionaire or is being the next millionaire a substitute for what he thinks might be his calling?

</comment><comment><USER39> Any hobbies or interests beyond work, kids, and cooking? Not saying those are bad interests, by any means. But there is a lot out there. Specifically, some interesting hobbies that tend to cost a lot (learning to fly a small plane, sky diving, traveling, etc).

</comment><comment><USER40> I would suggest he looks for a Life Coach. They will help him find the source of his feeling "Stuck" and help him find some objectives that will help him find meaning and purpose!

</comment><comment><USER41> What are you trying to fix?

Is he supposed to just accept a mediocre wage-slave existence and settle into obscurity?

That works for some, but if he wants to strive for more, let him.

</comment><comment><USER42> Your friend (and wife) needs adventure not success.

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe the problem is that money can't buy what he's really wanting, but he doesn't realize that that's the problem.

</comment><comment><USER44> Ask him what he wanted to do as a kid. Chances are he can afford to experience a bit of that now, and maybe share that with his family.

</comment><comment><USER45> some nice walls of text here. If you can't do, teach. Tell him to love his wife and spend as much time with her as he can, if he values her more than his own ego. There's plenty of time to get that winning idea. He isn't some freak from a Stephen King novel and he doesn't need therapy or any tibetan bullshit for dead people.

</comment><comment><USER46> Yeah, sure, "friend."

I'm curious where you're from. Who refers to people as "25Y old male?"

</comment><comment><USER47> Why not tell him to keep at it. He's only a failure if he gives up on his dreams and stops trying.

</comment><comment><USER48> Stop reading startup sites every day.

</comment><comment><USER49> Sounds like perspective is needed.

</comment><comment><USER50> Tell him to start paragliding :)</comment>


Doctors claim to have "functional cure" for HIV - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/05/eveningnews/main20069146.shtml <comment><USER2> This story -- which is no doubt remarkable -- seems to make the rounds frequently both on mainstream news and HN:

      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=357144
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=478354
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678857
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139637
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2002843
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004448
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2005318
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2006975
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2007580
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2554536
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2617358

</comment><comment><USER3> >"The Berlin Patient," as Brown is known, received stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV. In fact, about one percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV. Some say it goes back to the Great Plague; People who survived the plague developed an immunity, and that immunity was passed down to their heirs today.

Immune to HIV. That's news to me, so i decided to do a bit of research.

The gene responsible for this immunity is CCR5-Δ32. It blocks a receptor in white blood cells; not allowing the virus to attach. The original patent for finding this gene is awarded to a Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York.

The HIV virus first binds with the CCR4 protein, and later CCR5. A mutation in the CCR5 prevents the virus from infecting T-Cells and is what causes this immunity.

"A person obtaining two mutated CCR5 genes will be immune to the HIV virus. However, someone containing one mutated CCR5 gene will be resistant to HIV but not necessarily immune. If a person with one mutated CCR5 gene becomes infected the infection tends to have a more lethargic course of infection, than someone without a mutated CCR5 gene."[1]

The gene is found in a lot of Swedes, but decreases as one moves deeper into Northern Europe. Approximately 10% of Europeans have the mutated CCR5-Δ32 gene. I found that especially interesting, seeing as the patient in this article received the marrow transplant in Germany; as opposed to the US or otherwise.

I think HIV/AIDS is a very interesting virus. The new small pox of sorts.

[1] [https://sharepoint.cisat.jmu.edu/isat/klevicca/Web/Case_Stud...](https://sharepoint.cisat.jmu.edu/isat/klevicca/Web/Case_Studies/351%20aids%20resistance.doc)

<comment><USER4> Now it is very easy to know this kind of information:

<https://www.23andme.com/health/Resistance-to-HIV-AIDS/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been posted before? It's about a patient who was given a bone marrow, stem cell transplant that "had astounding results".

<comment><USER6> Yup, in this case the cure is worse than the disease.</comment></comment>


JQuery 1.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://jquery14.com/day-01/jquery-14

<comment><USER2> They're using the Google Closure compiler as their minifier now.

Resig in this presentation (warning: video autoplay), in response to the last question, said that while it's slick if you simply throw jquery into it you'll just get broken javascript out: [http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=resig- tes...](http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=resig-testing) I wonder what has changed?

(Maybe just not running it in advanced mode; at any rate, they're reporting a 13% decrease in file size: [http://github.com/jquery/jquery/commit/3fd62eae9df3159fc238a...](http://github.com/jquery/jquery/commit/3fd62eae9df3159fc238a515bb748140a942313d))

<comment><USER3> Yeah, we only use simple mode - it's advanced mode that everyone needs to watch out for - it doesn't do what you expect (it's optimized for combining multiple files, not producing one file).

<comment><USER4> If you carefully read the instructions, you can learn how to compile libraries with it - there is explicit support for this use case. (which is likely what jQuery have done.)

Exports: [http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api- tutorial3.h...](http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api- tutorial3.html#export)

Extern: [http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api- tutorial3.h...](http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api- tutorial3.html#externs)

<comment><USER3> Actually it's not really efficient for us to do that - since we would need to expose literally everything and in the end we would end up with the same result as running it through the simple minifier. As it turns out though the simple minifier is quite good - giving us a 13% improvement over YUI Min.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The performance boost is great but I think the thing I'm most excited about is "All Events Can Be Live Events". Thanks jQuery team!

<comment><USER4> I haven't looked at Live events yet, is there anywhere I can read through a rundown of what they offer?

<comment><USER5> In a nutshell you can bind to selectors dynamically - so if content gets added to the document that matches an existing Live binding, jQuery will go ahead and create the binding for you. It didn't work with all event types in previous versions of jQuery; now it seems that they're essentially all covered.

See here: <http://api.jquery.com/live/>

<comment><USER6> That's a good explanation, but its not actually that jQuery automatically binds events to the newly inserted elements, its that it takes advantage of Javascript's event bubbling to match the selector at the highest level it can.

Basically, if you had HTML like this:

                Hello World

and the user clicks on the span, Javascript will raise a click event not only for the span but for each of its parents (p, div, body and html).

jQuery's live events take advantage of this by "trapping" the click event (or blur, focus, etc) at the highest level. This leads to 2 distinct advantages:

1) Elements inserted into a page after the script is initialized don't need to have events bound to them. (this is what defen was referencing)

2) You don't have to bind a callback to every single element.

The second can pay dividends even if there is no dynamically inserted content. For instance, lets say you have a table with 1000 cells and you want to make them editable when the user clicks on them.

Traditionally, you would do something like this:

        $('td').click(function () { makeCellEditable(this); } );

Although this would work, binding 1000 callbacks, one to each td element, will seriously impact browser performance.

With live events the syntax is very similar:

        $('td').live('click', function () { makeCellEditable(this); } );

The difference is we've only bound 1 event, so the browser's performance will not be adversely affected.

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER5> Awesome! I didn't know how it actually worked. Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is up with the stacked bar charts used to show performance improvements in various css/html features? I can't really think of a seeing a more useless/opaque chart in quite a while. They make it impossible to do effective 1.3 -> 1.4 comparisons for specific browsers and since no one is running on all five browsers at once the weird style chosen doesn't even coherently communicate an overall point.

<comment><USER8> There's raw numbers at the very bottom of the page

<comment><USER7> Which you don't see until you scroll all the way down there. What annoys me about the chart is that it is obvious how to do something like this (two bars, before & after, for each browser) and the creators of the page apparently know how to create such a graph because the first graph is exactly in this format -- it is all of the remaining graphs that use the information-free format.

<comment><USER9> This is a very standard way libraries have been presenting their speed comparison for quite awhile now. You can look at the individual slivers to get a rough estimate of the size difference, and overall cross browser comparison, and see which browsers are the slowest.

It's a very good visualization, letting one compare the same browser across two version of jquery, an aggregate of browsers across both versions, and the speed of individual browsers against each other on the same version, and individual speeds across the different versions. It's very data packed.

<comment><USER7> No, it is not a good visualization.

You cannot easily compare the same browser across two versions of jquery because each browser starts at a different point on the Y axis for each column; you cannot easily scan from one column to the next to see the difference but must jump back and forth figuring out start-end points and trying to guess at differences.

It makes it difficult to compare the individual speeds across different versions because the nature of the chart compresses the vertical space to make the larger of the two stacked bars fit into the graph, artificially compressing the Y axis (which measures the only thing we care about in this graph) and diminishing the scale for all of the items being compared.

The only thing it makes easy to see is an aggregate of browser speeds across versions (and since nothing runs on all browsers at the same time this measurement is not very valuable) and as a comparator of individual browsers against each other, which is the second least-important metric in these charts.

<comment><USER9> I think you're being deliberately obtuse.

Take the Performance of .css() and .attr() chart. I can tell very easily that in FF 3.5, time to execute cut in half, ie 6/7/8 and Opera 10.10 are ~2/3 what it was, and safari and chrome about 1/2. You can also see that in 1.4 FF comes in third, behind safari and chrome and ahead of opera 10.10, and that ie is the slowest in order or 8,7,6.

It also shows that FF 3.5 has great gains with this release, as it was behind opera in 1.3

That's a lot of information packed into one tiny chart. Yes, diving into the specifics takes some doing, but the primary purpose of the chart is to show the overall gain in 1.4 vs. 1.3. Breakdown by browser is a bonus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been a Prototype user for a few years now. I've always kept an eye on jQuery, but my knowledge of it is incredibly shallow. I have to say, I was shocked when I saw that they added the "proxy" method. This description makes it sound exactly like "bind" method in Prototype. Is that a valid comparison? If so, why did it take so long for this to appear in jQuery? At this point, I don't think I could write a snippet of javascript without relying on that method.

<comment><USER11> "var self = this" provides a workaround that isn't too verbose, so maybe it diminished the need for "bind" enough to put it off.

FWIW, I do use a $.bind method that I got from somewhere in my own jQuery code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Live Q&A at 4pm EST. <http://ustream.tv/channel/14-days-of-jquery>

</comment><comment><USER13> Making jquery.browser engine-centric is a nice touch, especially now that webkit based browsers are breeding like rabbits.

</comment><comment><USER14> Those graphs performance graphs per browser are very confusing. I'm guessing that the individual colors show the time taken per browser, but the fact that it's stacked makes me think that the slowest ones are on top and the fastest ones are on bottom, but that can't be right since IE6 is always second from the bottom.

<comment><USER9> They are not ordered by speed. I'm not sure how they are ordered, but the height of the color is the amount of time it takes in that browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations to the jQuery team for the optimizations in 1.4. It's hard to believe such gains were made over 1.3 considering how significant _that_ change was over 1.2.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is cool. remove() was a bottleneck for my app, but a constant-fraction speedup won't be enough to fix it. I'll have to dig in and see if it actually works differently now.

<comment><USER3> Constant fraction? It's a 4x speedup - that seems like more than enough to help you out!

<comment><USER16> Well it was taking like 20 seconds to do my cleanup. Five seconds still sucks for users. IIRC, remove has to recurse to every child to check for stored data, so I'm just removing the nodes manually and eating the tiny data memory leak.

edit: and yes, 4x is a constant fraction, as opposed to an asymptotic improvement. :)

<comment><USER3> Actually, we did reduce the complexity to a constant: Went from n^2 to just n: <http://ejohn.org/blog/function-call-profiling/>

The 4x number was wall-clock time for the particular tests - so obviously your mileage may vary. In fact, the more complicated your case the better your eventual gains will be.

<comment><USER16> Great link, thanks. Looking at the patch I can now why it's n^2 -- I didn't realize it was that bad when I looked at the code before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just upgraded <http://wasitup.com> to jQuery 1.4 without issues.

</comment><comment><USER18> Fixed a jquery 1.4 alpha related bug over at <http://twidl.it> for our reTwidl function! In the nick of time too (we encountered bug yesterday). Thanks Jquery team!

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds awesome. I'm going to have to update ASAP.

Great work - coding javascript is seriously easier than it was before JQuery came along.

</comment><comment><USER20> I found the page linked under the words "reduce the complexity" ( <http://ejohn.org/blog/function-call-profiling/> ) a rather exemplary tale of profile-and-optimize.

</comment><comment><USER21> Consistently crashes Chrome 4.0.266.0 on Ubuntu

</comment><comment><USER22> Congrats to the jQuery team!</comment>


Apply HN: Spread Code Review Load - <AUTHOR> "1 file code review, 50 comments; 50 file code review, no comments looks good to me." Human nature is causing us to lose focus where focus is needed most.
<Product> takes your code reviews and gives your developers a small portion of them to focus on. If you have 10 developers, give each a single file to vet in your 10 file code review. Context is important, so each developer can still participate in the entire review - they'll just be directed to focus on one part of it. For this reason, files pass a review - it is not a wholesale fail or pass. We'll remember which files passed and let the next round of developers know.
Sometimes you need developers from a specific team to vet changes. Allocate those developers to a team and bring them into the fold for those reviews; spread knowledge by also including developers from other teams.
Got an open source project? Crowd source your reviews and possibly attract contributors by publishing to our hub. We'll match reviewers based on their language and stack experience. We'll still make sure that your developers are involved in every review.
We're going to start off with GitHub, but will be expanding to other platforms in the future - including on-premise platforms such as Perforce and TFS.
Note: I am currently committed to a job. I am leaving this in the open for anyone who would like to pick it up. <comment><USER2> If you've ever read _The Mythical Man Month_ , one of the key parts of a software project is coherence of vision.

If everybody is picking at little pieces of code for review at random, that sort of thing is near impossible to achieve.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this sentiment. Large pull requests are large because they have to be. If they're large because you were too lazy to make many PRs, then your process is broken and this won't fix it.

When reviewing a 50+ file PR (that really couldn't be broken up into smaller ones) you really need to keep all of those files in mind while reviewing every part of the PR.</comment></comment>


With iPhone C, Apple Could Take Smartphone Lead in China | PickToRead - <AUTHOR> http://picktoread.com/with-iphone-c-apple-could-take-smartphone-lead-in-china/ <comment><USER2> A cheaper iPhone would be huge in a lot of developing countries, China most definitely included. There's already so much cachet around Apple products in major cities, but despite it becoming Apple's biggest market there just aren't that many people (percentage-wise) that can afford them.

<comment><USER3> I've heard pricing rumors anywhere from $300 to $500 off-contract. If it's priced towards the top end of those estimates, it won't really help the developing world. Personally, I feel that anything over $300 is going to be a slap in the face to consumers. Apple's supply chain management is the best in the industry, so they wouldn't really have an excuse for not being able to compete with Google's Nexus pricing.</comment></comment>


Struggles with the Continuum - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.01421 <comment><USER2> I read the first few pages and will certainly want to dig into the rest. It is interesting insightful stuff from a true expert.

Something I never realized as an undergradute math major/ physics minor was to what exent mathematics is arbitrary. We set certain axioms describing the real line, and then two, three, higher dimensional spaces. But the actual details are governed by arbitrary choices and culture as opposed to any reason of necessity.

A lot of advanced mathematics assumes the axiom of choice, but as far as the mathematics applies to the real world there is no known consequences to assuming the opposite. It is purely a cultural choice.

People have an idea that math is universal and absolute, but that isn't so much true!

<comment><USER3> They assume the axiom of choice because it makes a lot of nice results possible. So, it's not exactly arbitrary.

<comment><USER4> Let Mathematicians frolic in the Platonic world if they wish, but should physicists be using continuous math if our universe ends up by being discrete and finite?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Together with "There are no particles, only fields" ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616](https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616)) at the top of my web reading list.

<comment><USER6> While I agree with that paper, I was unsatisfied with it. He simply hand waved away the measurement problem, which is the single largest conceptual issue with the idea that everything is waves. To be fair, he explicitly says that he will not address the measurement problem, but I think if it weren't for the measurement problem there wouldn't be any issue believing that everything is made of waves. In particular, position eigenvector collapse is what causes the appearance that things are made of localized particles, but we don't actually know how it works. We have all sorts of interpretations, none of them confirmed, and many of them nonsensical. Plug for my favorite hypothetical mechanism, Einselection. It's so boring and straightforward-ish that I think it has a good chance of being the right idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> he blogged about this last week [https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john- baez/](https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john-baez/)

<comment><USER8> For visitors from the future, the last post in the series is [https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/struggles- continuum-c...](https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/struggles-continuum- conclusion) . It links to the previous ones.</comment></comment>


Understanding Transducers - <AUTHOR> http://elbenshira.com/blog/understanding-transducers/ <comment><USER2> This is tangential, but as a medical device engineer and one that works quite a bit with Ultrasound, the title of this article caught my interest, but it turned out to be about something completely different.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_sensor#Transducers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_sensor#Transducers)

<comment><USER3> I've noticed that simple googling for Clojure keywords is one of the more amusingly fruitless activities to do. Almost every term I lookup is a high level concept in some potentially vaguely related field. For example, on the frontend, reagent + state gives me chemistry results, during music overtone + piano gives me piano acoutics, etc etc etc.

<comment><USER4> tack on 'clojure'?

<comment><USER3> Thats hopefully already obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those that have a hard time reading the clojure code, i recomend this blogpost where they are explained with js.

See: [http://phuu.net/2014/08/31/csp-and- transducers.html](http://phuu.net/2014/08/31/csp-and-transducers.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> That article was what inspired me to write this blog post.

In short, the key insight of the blog post is this (via untested javascript):

You can define transforming functions like map and filter via reduce (e.g. foldleft or, for Ruby, inject) instead. For example,

      map([...], function (x) { return x + 1; });

Can be written as:

      // append (x + 1) to the result collection
      reduce([...], [], function (result, x) { return append(result, plusOne(x)); });

But notice that, above, we explicitly chose `plusOne` and `append`. If we allow a user to pass in any function instead, then we have a higher-order function:

      function mapping(f) {
        return function (reducing) {
          return function (result, input) {
            return reducing(result, f(input));
          }
        };
      }

Now we can do:

      var xform = mapping(plusOne)(append);

      reduce([...], [], xform);

`xform` is a transducer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not a functional programmer and I always find that when I read clojure it just looks like layers and layers of nested code. Personally, I find it visually hard to parse.

Can someone enlighten me why clojure seems to be the trending language?

<comment><USER7> As far as functional languages go, it's a nice compromise between the absolute purity of something like Haskell and the day-to-day practicalities necessitated by building practical, scalable things quickly (core.async, nice Java integration, runs on the JVM).

As far as looking like a parenthesis layer cake, that's part of the Lisp "tradition", really. One can look at is as the price you pay for true homoiconicity and powerful macros.

<comment><USER8> _" the absolute purity of something like Haskell"_

Working with Haskell for a while, "absolute" there starts to seem weird - there is room in "programming language space" for "more pure than Haskell", and some attempts at it. I've not drawn any conclusions yet as to whether anything in that space is practical, but it's certainly interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I expected an article on electronics when I clicked and took me a while to understanding what was going on.</comment>


SVG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Published, Working Group Charter Extended - <AUTHOR> http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/svg-2-0-candidate-recommendation-published <comment><USER2> Nice work. Unfortunately adaption by browsers will probably take a few years, if you consider that WebKit still has a broken Masking implementation, fifteen years after the spec was released. Anyway, keep up the great work.</comment>


Experts: Windows 8 features make account passwords easier to steal - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/10/experts-windows-8-features-make-account-passwords-easier-to-steal/

<comment><USER2> "According to security experts who have tested the features in developer _pre- releases_ of the upcoming Microsoft operating system"

Verify this is an issue in the RTM and then report on it, otherwise this is complete rubbish, especially considering that the RTM has been available for over a month now.</comment>


For the first time in 15 years, a new Alzheimer's drug looks promising - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1336195/biogen-and-esais-new-alzheimers-drug-ban2401-shows-promising-results-in-a-phase-ii-trial/ <comment><USER2> "Most worryingly, it turns out that there was a clear difference between the placebo group and the treatment group in APOE4 status."

I would turn to Derek Lowe as he is an expert in the field who has been looking forward to this release... he holds out hope, but is not positive on "the field is in the state it's in today."

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/07/26/bio...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/07/26/biogen- and-eisai-let-the-alzheimers-arguing-commence)

"APOE4, a lipoprotein, has been recognized as a risk factor for Alzheimer's since back in the 1990s, although the mechanism behind that has been the subject of debate. But there was a regulatory-mandated change in enrollment of APOE4 patients during the (Bayesian) trial, for fear of a brain-swelling side effect that these patients are also prone to, and there ended up being far more APOE4-positive patients in the placebo group compared to the high-dose group (70% versus 30%)."

<comment><USER3> Should also note that the study missed its primary endpoint, but the companies decided to wait for the 18 month analysis anyway, and one dose seemed promising at this 18 month timepiint. Other doses did worse than placebo

Other analysts who have been looking forward to the data and have digested it in detail have similar takes, others more positive:

[https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/biogen-and-eisai-s- ant...](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/biogen-and-eisai-s-anti-amyloid- med-slows-alzheimer-s-decline-phase-2)

APOE4 status was an issue. Also the fact that two doses did worse than placebo was odd. And one of the measures of cognitive decline was a metric developed by the company, which could be concerning or could be valid, idk

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"Although the results are promising, this trial was fairly small, and as Vox points out, it's frowned upon in the research community to change your end results midway through a trial. At the moment, the FDA requires new drugs targeting Alzheimer's to go through two phase III trials, showing a reduction of both a biological marker for the disease and cognitive decline. In March of this year, the organization published a draft report that said in the future they would accept only a reduction of biomarkers, without a reduction in cognitive decline, a decision has been supported by the research community. This is because in early cases of Alzheimer's, patients may have the biological indicators of the disease without actually showing symptoms."

I wouldn't consider this promising at all. It looks like it was "too hard" so standards are being lowered.

<comment><USER5> > It looks like it was "too hard" so standards are being lowered.

Not at all. It turns out one of the standards was not relevant to the target population. As you quoted: "This is because in early cases of Alzheimer's, patients may have the biological indicators of the disease without actually showing symptoms."

There's no point in trying to alleviate symptoms where there are no symptoms. If I develop a drug that removes tumors that _eventually_ caused headaches, is it somehow lowering standards if it removes tumors _before_ a headache appears?

<comment><USER4> >"This is because in early cases of Alzheimer's, patients may have the biological indicators of the disease without actually showing symptoms."

This is called a "degenerating research programme". The theory always lags the facts, this is just another ad hoc adjustment to keep it going for some reason. Why? I really cant understand. Whats the last interesting prediction that has come out of the amyloid hypothesis?

Here is an interesting prediction: Amyloid accumulation will be found to be associated with every single disease state where it is investigated. Every single one. This is because amyloid formation is very thermodynamically favorable for polypeptide chains and a cell must be healthy to prevent it.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting. I've got a kidney infection at the moment, are you suggesting that I have amyloid plaques in my brain?

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia has a bit on it:

>"Amyloidosis is a group of diseases in which abnormal protein, known as amyloid fibrils, builds up in tissue. [...] The presentation of amyloidosis is broad and depends on the site of amyloid accumulation. The kidney and heart are the most common organs involved. [...] AA is suspected on clinical grounds in individuals with longstanding infections or inflammatory diseases." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloidosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloidosis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> originally i was going to write this entire trial off as a pharma industry snow job with heavily contrived data -- and it still might be -- but i think there's probably at least something worth talking about here.

the drug slows progression, allegedly by clearing amyloid plaques. in one sense, that is not enough. alzheimer's still wins in the long run. in another sense, it's a big improvement in the state of the science and clinical practice. the stuff we were using to try to slow the progression of alzheimer's before was largely ineffective. trials like this shed light on fundamental research questions while hopefully helping patients at the same time.

on the other hand, if the progression is slowed at the cost of a large drop in patient quality of life, it may not be worth it clinically in the present state. there's no indication that this is the case, but i wouldn't rule it out until we have more data. there seem to be allergic reactions and potential brain swelling as side effects of the therapy. personally, i would predict that these effects are far more common than is being currently reported. that doesn't mean the therapy is useless, just that it has consequences like any other therapy does.

finally, the amyloid hypothesis has come under a lot of scrutiny recently. as the article points out, removing most plaques does not lead to a cured patient, merely an improvement -- but not an improvement which brings the patient back to normal function. if this trial ends up falling through, it might be the end of the amyloid hypothesis in clinical practice and drug development. that would be a step forward towards a greater understanding... but also very discouraging because we'd need to discard a lot of what we were assuming was the canon up to this point.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to evaluate this because there is nothing published yet. There have been grumblings on twitter of imbalance in important genetically-driven predictors of Alzheimer's[1]. This might make it very hard to understand whether the effect is due to this imbalance, or truly due to the drug. I can't really evaluate for myself since I don't see the data anywhere.

1 = [https://twitter.com/sciencescanner/status/102246964947947520...](https://twitter.com/sciencescanner/status/1022469649479475200)

</comment><comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I am a lay person that does not know a lot about this subject, but have read a few things on it and have people in my family this could potentially affect.

I think the Herpes research is much more promising than trying to fight Alzheimer's by removing plaques. Catching it earlier in the process seems potentially better?

Especially since the plaques are thought to be a protective immune response to invaders, like viruses, because the plaques encapsulate them to prevent them from affecting the brain.

Plaques may still potentially be a cause of issues- but is enough known that reducing their quantity will significantly help without destroying the beneficial nature of the immune response that causes the plaques? and do we know for sure that the plaques themselves _cause_ the decline, or are they just a by-product that seemed like a potential candidate that got latched onto?

<comment><USER10> Herpes viruses are implicated in so many illnesses, cancer, auto immune diseases, now Alzheimers, we need a lot more effort going into producing HHV6/7 and EBV vaccines. (Probably HSV1/2 also but I don't know enough about those two.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just a few links above this article was this:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4)

Which seems, like many studies ("Coffee is great! Coffee gives you cancer!"), to show contradictory information.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not a cure, it only slows the progression and has no positive effect at all on the mental symptoms.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't performing better on two different cognitive tests over placebo be a positive effect on symptoms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just yesterday there was this opinion piece in Nature, suggesting that reducing amyloids might not help.

The amyloid hypothesis on trial [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4)</comment>


Why Concrete Language Communicates Truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/why-concrete-language-communicates-truth.php <comment><USER2> This seems to be about concrete language (as it says) rather than about programmers' habit of being 'painfully articulate', ie being really, to the point of overly, clear. I wonder though whether /that/ also makes you more credible.

Along similar lines, using E Prime (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime>) helps clarity and avoids /one/ source of conceptual fuzziness.</comment>


Ask HN: What does a blockchain give you that a database doesn't? - <AUTHOR> I'm always told that one of the main benefits of a blockchain is that it enforces trust, or something to that extent. But enforcing trust in databases is not an open problem. Databases successfully store data. Therefore blockchains seem like a 'solution' to a problem that doesn't exist. <comment><USER2> Do you need a decentralised way to ensure consensus among nodes? If not, blockchain is overkill for you!

<comment><AUTHOR> What applications does decentralized consensus enable creation of, aside from cryptocurrencies, that are infeasible to make with a database?

<comment><USER3> Trust is an important aspect. Especially at scale. If you were designing a large scale energy trading platform for example, that is trading hundreds of million or billions of dollars a day, a centralised database controlled by a third party is prone to corruption - when you get to that level of wealth, it's basically guaranteed.

Or what about recording tax documents, or political promises, storing them on an immutable chain that's unhackable (to the point that once it's on chain the only way to modify it is to hack _every_ copy on _every_ node)

These are very large scale problems, and there's lots of uses where databases will do just fine, but I see the key benefits as decentralised trust

<comment><USER2> Today I participated in voting (put your energy in the system!) in local elections and I must say, voting is something that would benefit immensely from blockchain ideas. Cryptographically secured ballots that are verifiable but also don't expose individual's voting preferences, it's very possible! Very intriguing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if we are talking public blockchains, Immutablity, decentralized trust and censorship resistance

Private blockchains can be anything the owner wants them to be.</comment>


15,000 more monthly signups just by changing the name of my webapp. - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupproject.org/2011/06/name/

<comment><USER2> It's a little hard to judge this article when the most important information (the before and after of the name) has been changed in the pursuit of anonymity.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's about scvngr? <http://www.scvngr.com/> Just a guess. :)

<comment><USER2> I thought that at first too, but they have press going back to 2009 under the name scvngr: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/13/scvngr-lets-you-build- aweso...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/13/scvngr-lets-you-build-awesome- scavenger-hunts-for-any-mobile-phone/)

<comment><USER3> Hmmm, got a point there. Can't think of another related location based service though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We had a similar experience about a month ago. We rebranded (with help from HN <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560805>) from Sfalma (greek word for error) to BugSense and our sigups increased by x4.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could the change in numbers be attributable to going from a generic English word to something more unique and discoverable (if you'll pardon my pun)

<comment><USER6> I'll go one step further about what you said and guess that a search with a generic English name in a search engine will return 1000s of results with your application at the bottom of page 100.

With a unique name you are now on page one at the top of the results. Probably also valid for search in app stores.

However for this to work you need first to hear the name somewhere and it needs to be easy to remember.

<comment><USER7> This would be a great theory, except there wasn't a jump in web traffic from the name change, only conversions/purchases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From article: "Following our recent article titled -'how i doubled the price of my software product – and sold ten times as many copies' we received emails from numerous developers with similar stories to share regarding their own startups, and today we are sharing one of those tales. The developer who's application we are covering wishes to remain anonymous: please understand that this anonymity is what allows us to share specific user signup, traffic and revenue statistics in these articles that the developers wouldn't otherwise be comfortable sharing – the anonymity is a worthwhile sacrifice in our opinion- but let us know your thoughts in the comments below. For the purposes of this story, the developer will be known as 'Steve' and the product name, 'Discover' (at least originally!)."

Is there real value in unknown data?

Is it anonymity or intellectual property, safety or paranoia?

There could be more reasons: probably, or possibly?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the new name listed better in the AppStore/Market for some reason?

Maybe it was closer to some other popular app and picked up traffic from that?

Without the real names it's kind of difficult to imagine trying to replicate this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who thinks someone around here should know about a site with 15k monthly signups and a iPhone and Android app?

(On the other hand I never really got twitter, -a cheap version of teambox that for most people is just a more convenient way of receiving spam : )

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm this is quite weird. Maybe the new name made it feel more like a 'cool web app' which made more people sign up. Can't make much of this without the actual name etc though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps the act of rebranding itself resulted in more users? One might be reminded of a service or reassured that a service is active by a rebranding.

</comment><comment><USER13> did they already have those users on the web app and just the mobile app download increased after the name change?

article is confusing.</comment>


Magic tricks of testing - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/skmetz/magic-tricks-of-testing-railsconf

<comment><USER2> TDD is the way to go (y), great notes

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool

</comment><comment><USER4> oh awesome</comment>


Oregon now lets you legally possess more marijuana than any other state - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/7/1/8873147/marijuana-legalization-oregon

<comment><USER2> That _is_ quite a bit to be carrying around, but definitely not an unreasonable occurrence. After all, when a person decides they've found their absolute favorite strain, then purchasing a decent supply (for some weeks, like any other household staple) is a reasonable action for them to take.

Purchasing habits will slowly change from the "let's pick up a couple grams" mentality to the, "Uh-oh, better add an ounce of kush to the weekend to-do list" mentality.</comment>


Jensen's Device - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen%27s_Device

<comment><USER2> OK, I give in - I can't for the life of me think of why this is interesting. I mean, it's the equivalent of passing a pointer to a value rather than the value itself in C, and is the bog standard techniques to use in this type of language to achieve multiple return values. But I just don't get why that is interesting - it's a bit more like programming 101...

<comment><USER3> This is not passing-by-pointer. If you look at the example `swap(i,A[i])` in the "Criticism" section, you'll see that it is not the address of `A[i]`(as evaluated at call time) that is passed, but the entire expression `A[i]` to be re-evaluated every time `i` changes.

There isn't a lot of support for this kind of thing in modern languages. Lambdas do come to mind, e.g. `swap(() => i, () => A[i])`, but few languages support returning lvalues from closures without significant boilerplate.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the explanation. In general, is this considered an anti-pattern? In other words, It's interesting but not advisable to consider in production programming?

<comment><USER3> It's mostly a language-evolutionary dead end that gave us some good ideas.

The original implementations were very bad: pass-by-name was not visible at the calling point, so any function call could suddenly break due to aliasing issues (or change the value of a local variable, which is also the case with pass-by-reference). I am not aware of any widely used modern languages that implement it outside of macros (including C preprocessor macros, LISP, etc.)

The original concept has been refined over time and made its way into other languages though, in the form of callbacks, continuations, etc.

<comment><USER5> > The original implementations were very bad: pass-by-name was not visible at > the calling point, so any function call could suddenly break due to aliasing > issues (or change the value of a local variable, which is also the case with > pass-by-reference). I am not aware of any widely used modern languages that > implement it outside of macros (including C preprocessor macros, LISP, etc.)

Scala. Call-by-name that is invisible at the call point. It doesn't cause aliasing issues because it's treated like getting passed a lambda, but if any of the code has side effects you can be very surprised about when they occur.

<comment><USER6> I've used Scala's call-by-name, but what I really wanted was call-by-let taking the argument as pure and evaluating at most once in the called function.

<comment><USER5> scala's call-by-name is often used for implementing control-flow like structures, so you can understand why they would want to be able to evaluate it more than once. Having said that, there are so many situations where it can be surprising, I'd probably have had a rule that you have to use {} to indicate call-by-name arguments at call site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhere in here is a pop culture reference that I can't quite put together.

<comment><USER8> I thought it was a "Jepsen" device at first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a terrible idea.</comment>